Some microcontroller-based user software applications require large amounts of data to be stored in embedded flash memory. The size of the embedded flash memory may be limited, however, because of cost or other reasons. Thus, some implementations rely on an external flash memory. For situations in which size and performance are not critical, serial flash memories, which tend to be relatively small and less expensive, can be used instead of parallel flash memories, which tend to be faster and larger, but also more expensive. Serial flash memories, however, often are more difficult to control. For example, microprocessors generally cannot execute code or read/write data randomly directly from the serial memory.